


You Must Remember This

by HiNerdsItsCat (HiLarpItsCat)



Series: Two Can Play At That Game [6]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 10, Alternate Timelines, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Episode AU: s10e12 The Doctor Falls, Episode: s10e12 The Doctor Falls, Everyone Is So Damn Soft, F/M, Happy Ending, Memories, Other, Post-Regeneration (Doctor Who), Post-Two Can Play At That Game, Recovered Memories, Regeneration (Doctor Who), Romance, Romantic Fluff, Season/Series 10, Season/Series 10 Spoilers, Soft Master (Doctor Who), Soft Thirteenth Doctor, Timeline What Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:27:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24971554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiLarpItsCat/pseuds/HiNerdsItsCat
Summary: The Twelfth Doctor and Missy get the surprise of their lives when they regenerate into a pair of very familiar faces.A coda to Twelve and Missy's final scene inTwo Can Play At That Game.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan), Twelfth Doctor/Missy
Series: Two Can Play At That Game [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1733089
Comments: 24
Kudos: 113





	You Must Remember This

**Author's Note:**

> Set during the Season 10 episode "The Doctor Falls"

His insides felt like they were burning up, but they still felt like _his_ insides, so the Doctor decided to count that as a small victory. He had at least a few more minutes before regenerating.

“I didn’t think the vortex manipulator would actually get us all the way _into_ the TARDIS,” Missy said, then drew in a sharp breath of pain. “I would have thought you had better shields than that.”

“I assumed,” the Doctor countered, finding himself unable to rise from the floor of the control room, “that you had engineered some kind of workaround.”

“Is that a compliment, Doctor?” she asked teasingly, then grit her teeth as another wave of agony appeared to pass through her. 

“Might be,” he admitted. He could already see the faint glow of regenerative energy coming from his hands. “I suppose I’m getting sentimental now that I’m approaching the end.”

“You’re not the only one,” she remarked grimly. “The vortex manipulator absorbed some of the blast from that stupid laser toy of his, but all that meant was that I didn’t die instantly.”

“There’s not much out there that can kill a Time Lord in one shot.” The Doctor couldn’t keep the scorn out of his voice. _“He_ should have known that better than anyone.”

Missy groaned in embarrassment. “I remember that fake gun ploy you used—four parts scattered around the Earth… I can’t believe I fell for that one.”

“Cheer up: you’ve matured.” He coughed and saw a cloud of gold in front of his face. He wouldn’t be able to hold it off for much longer, but couldn’t help asking, “So he was really _that_ upset that we’d patched things up between us?”

“I’m surprised he didn’t froth at the mouth,” she remarked wearily, then smirked. “I had you fooled for a bit there, didn’t I? You really believed that I had joined him.”

“Of course not,” the Doctor lied. He could feel something tickling at the corners of his eyes.

“That was one of your more strident speeches, you know.” She made a face that the Doctor assumed was meant to be an imitation of his expression. _“‘Where I stand is where I fall! Just be kind! I deserve a medal or at least some applause and a biscuit!’”_

“I did not say that,” he grumbled.

“I was paraphrasing.” She coughed and a similar haze of energy came out, despite her efforts to cover her mouth with her hand. “Hmm,” she murmured, examining the hand in question, “now that’s a bit odd.”

“You’ll have to narrow it down a bit.” His eyes were watering now and he couldn’t figure out why… he didn’t remember this side effect from any of the previous times he regenerated.

Missy pushed up her sleeve, revealing the vortex manipulator on her wrist. “It’s cold. The thing nearly burned me when I made that initial jump to retrieve you, but it never increased in temperature again after that, despite the trip back here being the one to short it out.”

The Doctor wiped at the tears in his eyes… which was when the answer to both his question and Missy’s question became clear.

“Bill Potts,” he whispered.

“What?” Missy’s look of confusion was cut short by another cough and a groan of discomfort.

“Your vortex manipulator wasn’t what made the second jump… it was her.”

“Your little pet, may I remind you, didn’t even survive her first trip in the TARDIS.”

He felt himself smiling. “But what if she did?”

Missy arched an eyebrow. “If you’re about to tell me that you spent all those months moping for nothing, I’m going to claw those watery eyes of yours right out.”

“I remember something… someone told me something about what happened to her…”

“I mean it, you’re about to get new eyes anyway,” Missy insisted, but the Doctor barely heard her over the memory of someone else speaking: 

_“She’s safe…”_

It was hard to focus on anything but the pain from his electrocution at the hands of the Cybermen on the colony ship, not to mention the multiple shots he had taken afterwards, but there was a voice in his memory that he was trying to drag to the surface:

_“It was still Heather. They’re out there somewhere now, travelling together.”_

The Doctor remembered a reassuring smile, but not the face that made it. He remembered the words, but not the voice that spoke them.

But it didn’t matter right now: what mattered was the answer.

“She was with a Pilot,” he said out loud, “and we needed a lift.” He laughed and started coughing again. “Good old Bill,” he wheezed.

“Congratulations, you got to solve one final mystery,” Missy said drily. “Give your horrible version of a smile a last hurrah.”

“It really is over for both of us, isn’t it?”

She made a noise of derision. “Speak for yourself. I plan on regenerating.”

“So do I,” he replied, annoyed. “But these faces, these people—”

“These lovely accents.”

“We’re changing. We’ll never be these people again, will we?” He honestly thought that he would be more afraid… or at least more upset. Change was so very terrifying.

Maybe he was just too distracted to be worried.

“I’d say that it’ll be a pleasure to watch you kick the bucket,” Missy said with a grimace, “but it doesn’t look like I’ll have enough attention to spare this go-around.”

“I’ve never regenerated with someone else before. At the same time, I mean.” 

“I’d call it _intimate,”_ Missy said mockingly, “except that you keep doing it in front of your pets, which should really get you put on some kind of _list.”_

Rather than respond, the Doctor dragged himself over to the console.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Sending us into the Vortex,” he explained. His vision was starting to blur behind a haze of gold, making it difficult to see the controls.

“Why…” she gasped through what looked like another shudder of pain, “…would you _possibly_ want to do that _right now?”_

The Doctor turned to frown at her and toppled over onto his hands and knees in the process. “Because it’s supposed to help ease the transition?”

“That’s a superstition.”

“No, it isn’t!”

Missy rolled her eyes. “If someone else is piloting, _maybe,_ but you doing it _yourself_ is the equivalent of trying to apply mascara while steering a supersonic missile. No wonder you have to keep redecorating the inside of your TARDIS every time you regenerate: you must leave a _mess—”_ She paused as if something had occurred to her. “Oh no…” she groaned.

“What now?”

“You don’t want to go into the Vortex—you want to go to _Earth.”_ Her expression hardened. “Picking up a new human as a housewarming present, are you?”

“That’s not—” But he could hear the tiniest hint of guilt in his own voice.

“What? You’d rather not have my face be the first one your next face sees?” she sneered. “Prefer someone _simpler_ to get attached to, like you’re some kind of little bird imprinting on a mother hen?”

He could feel the blood leaving his cheeks. “That is _not_ what I meant to—”

Missy tried to stagger to her feet. “Maybe I should just take my chances with that blond prick. He’s going to change into me in a few minutes anyway.”

 _“Stop!”_ the Doctor cried out. He could feel himself—the part of him that was still _this_ self—starting to get thin. He was running out of time and he really needed to tell her—

“Don’t leave,” he said with what felt like all the air left in his lungs.

Missy sighed impatiently. “Don’t worry, I’m not _actually_ planning to run back into his arms—”

“Don’t leave _me,”_ he whispered. “Please don’t leave me.”

Missy flinched. For a moment, the Doctor saw her hands tremble.

“All right,” she said quietly as she gave up on her attempt to stand up. “You’re stuck with me a little while longer.”

There was a _thank you_ on his tongue, but he couldn’t seem to say it out loud. Too little time… or maybe just too little courage. 

“Your next regeneration had better not be this saccharine,” she remarked, forcing the sarcasm back into her voice. “I’d get ill on an hourly basis, and I’m not sure my digestion could stand that.”

“We’re about to find out, aren’t we?” he managed to wheeze. “Any last words?”

“Shame I wasn’t the one to kill you,” she said with a grin.

He responded with a smile of his own. “Maybe you’ll get me next time.”

“You promise?”

He snorted. “No.”

But before she could reply, everything around them exploded in a shower of light.

One moment: dying. The next: being born.

* * *

_Hello! You’re the Doctor._

_Sometimes you forget that bit, so try extra hard to remember it this time._

_You’re the Doctor. You’re not very nice at times but you always try to be kind. You don’t always win but that’s not why you fight._

_And, despite your best efforts to irritate everyone you’ve ever met, you hate being alone._

_Oh, look! You’re not alone right now._

_You’re_ _the Doctor and_ _they’re_ _the Master. Yes, it’s a rubbish name and yes, you’ll probably keep telling them that until one or both of you run out of regenerations—_

_Oh, don’t forget: you regenerated!_

_You both did, in fact, so it’s_ _very_ _important that you remember: you’re the Doctor and they’re the Master—or maybe they’ll keep going by Missy, you won’t know until you ask._

_But before you can ask, you need to wake up._

_(Another question for when you get a spare moment: would_ _you_ _ever consider going by another name? Probably not, but one mustn’t rule anything out.)_

_What was I saying? Drat, all these neurons are still fizzing away. Focus, Doctor: what were you supposed to do next?_

_Oh, that’s right: wake up!_

* * *

The Doctor woke to discover a TARDIS that was surprisingly free of damage. There was a very slight odor of something like ozone in the air—ozone if it was mixed with the feeling of arriving five minutes too early—but nothing like the explosive catastrophes of the previous couple of regenerations.

There was also much less disorientation than usual.

_Perhaps Missy was right about the whole ‘don’t regenerate and drive’ thing._

_Not that I’d ever admit it out loud._

Speaking of which, there was a new person nearby: the Master’s next regeneration, who sat up with a tiny noise of exertion—

He looked _exactly_ like Harry Jones. 

For a moment, the Doctor wondered if perhaps there was some kind of teleportation incident that had brought Harry to the TARDIS… but that was highly unlikely, given that he was wearing the exact same outfit that Missy had been wearing only a few minutes before.

And if that wasn’t enough, the eyes were always a dead giveaway: that intense gaze could only belong to one person. 

Curiously, he was staring at the Doctor with an expression of utter shock as well.

“Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting _that—”_ the Doctor began, before recognising the voice: female, Northern, and _identical_ to the voice of Jenny Smith.

Hesitantly, she sat up and repositioned a lock of her hair so that she could see it. It was the exact same shade of blonde.

For some unfathomable reason, she and the Master had just regenerated into the forms of the Doctor’s former students and most recent human travelling companions.

Though it was possible that the Master hadn’t realised his own resemblance. “You look like him,” she said.

“This is—” The Master’s disbelief was cut off by a sharp gasp of discomfort.

“What is it?”

He winced. “Undergarments are fitting… a bit differently now.” He began hastily unbuttoning his jacket and shirt, flung the cravat tie over his shoulder, and practically tore the corset to shreds in an effort to get it off. “That’s better—” His sigh of relief was quickly replaced by another wince. “Oof, the _shoes.”_

The Doctor was forced to lean quickly to one side before the Master could throw one of his discarded heeled boots at her head.

“Was that really necessary?” she said, irritated, after dodging the other boot as well.

He ignored her complaint. “Next regeneration, I’m just going to wrap myself in a blanket first,” he vowed. “Your wardrobe had better contain something tasteful… but I’m not going to hold my breath.”

A very odd sensation began to work its way through the Doctor’s stomach, and she realised a second too late that she was staring at his shirtless chest a little longer than she meant to.

She shoved those thoughts to the side by focusing on how utterly _bizarre_ their current situation was. “How did we regenerate into looking exactly like _them?”_

“Stranger things have happened,” he said. “Though not many, I’ll admit.”

“It happened with my last one too,” she mused.

“It did?”

The Doctor nodded. “I saved some Romans, a few regenerations ago, and ended up with one of their faces. I was never completely sure why, but I think it was a reminder: to hold myself to the mark, to save people when I can—”

“Spare me another one of your speeches,” the Master groaned.

“What I _meant,”_ the Doctor continued with a glare (one that was surprisingly challenging because looking into his eyes kept scrambling her train of thought), “is that the resemblance was a message.” She indicated her new body. “So what’s the message here?”

“If it was just you, then _maybe_ I would believe that nonsense about leaving yourself a sticky note reminding you how _noble_ you are,” he drawled, “but that doesn’t explain how _I_ ended up as a bloody university student who somehow already has stubble on his face despite existing for less than ten minutes.” He rubbed at his chin in annoyance. “It’ll be nice to have a beard again, though.”

“Just don’t make it a goatee this time,” she told him.

However, in the process of examining the aforementioned stubble, the Doctor found herself getting distracted again, this time by all sorts of things that she certainly hadn’t noticed about Harry Jones, like the shape of his lips and how _long_ his eyelashes were.

“They still might have subconsciously influenced us,” she said, hastily returning to the matter at hand. “Jenny and Harry were both rivals, just like we used to be, and then they stopped fighting and—”

“And then what?” The Master scooted forward to where she was sitting on the floor until his mocking expression was only a few centimeters from her face. “And then got… _intimate?”_ His gaze flicked down to look at her mouth and then returned to staring into her eyes. “Don’t think I missed the way you’ve been staring at me,” he whispered.

“I’m just trying to get accustomed to the change in your appearance,” she protested, but knew that the blush on her cheeks was undermining her claim.

“Really?” he taunted her. “Then I suppose you’d object if I—” He froze.

Unnerved, the Doctor moved out of range. “What?”

“Ridiculous,” he breathed, eyes wide. “Absolutely ridiculous. I cannot _believe_ we missed it—as though it wasn’t right there in front of our faces!” His expression was a mixture of frustration, realisation, and pure shock. “Come on, Doctor, catch up, you can do it,” he told her, but there was something almost pleading in his voice.

“Stop wasting time and jump straight to the gloating,” she retorted.

Rather than his usual triumphant smirk, the Master looked as though he was in front of a firing squad. “When was the last time you saw Jenny and Harry?”

“After the incident with the Monks in Leeds,” she replied automatically. “Harry stayed behind with Jenny and the two of us took the TARDIS back to Bristol.”

“Are you sure?” he asked urgently. “Are you _absolutely sure?”_

The Doctor wanted to reply that yes, she was absolutely sure… but there was a ticklish _thing_ at the edge of her memory, much like when she was trying to remember what happened to Bill.

It was as if she had forgotten… and now she was remembering… “No,” she whispered, “they came back to visit me at St Luke’s because they had… something good had happened to them… they were—oh!” A bit of memory fell back into place. “They were getting married and wanted me to be there—”

 _“Us_ to be there,” the Master corrected her, irritated in spite of the anxiety he continued to display.

But the Doctor wasn’t really listening. “And then we went on a trip in the TARDIS…” She frowned as a feeling of dread formed in her stomach. “Something awful happened… something that made them very sad—”

“And angry,” he interjected.

“—and then we went back to Bristol.” She squinted in confusion. “Why couldn’t we remember that?”

The Master made a noise of aggravation. “Come on, _think_ for once in your life!” he snapped. “What other times have you had that nagging suspicion like you just did something massive but the details of it were fuzzy? And no,” he added, “not the Silence. Those are just annoying. What happened during the times when you couldn’t remember because it felt like the _timeline_ had gone a bit out of sync?”

“You can’t mean…” She knew what he was getting at, she _knew,_ but her mind was still struggling to form the actual words.

“Oh, I very much can,” he said. “Didn’t I _just do this_ back at the colony ship?”

“They _can’t_ be,” she gasped.

“They are,” he insisted.

The Doctor continued shaking her head in denial. “They were human.”

“You might be a bit thick right now, Doctor, but you know _exactly_ what they did: Chameleon Arch, false identities… they even managed to avert any nasty paradox issues in the process.”

She shut her eyes and felt her posture slump. “And when we took that last trip with them, that’s when they found out.”

“At which point, the timeline resynchronised and we lost all memory of it ever happening.”

“But we didn’t notice!” Her eyes flew open and she found herself getting angry. “We didn’t even notice that something was _missing!_ I can’t—I can’t even remember what happened _after_ we got back. It’s like entire days are completely gone.” She glared at him. “If you’re so brilliant, what do _you_ remember?”

The Master was silent for a few seconds, but finally answered before the Doctor could resume yelling at either him or at herself (at the moment, she couldn’t decide which, nor could she determine the reason why her hearts were pounding in her chest). “Music,” he said quietly. “It was the first time we ever played music together. At some point in there we talked, and it was about something important, but I can’t recall…”

“Maybe it’s for the best,” she murmured. “Never a good thing to know your own future.”

They sat in an uncomfortable silence for several minutes.

“Why is this so…?” she asked, but couldn’t figure out what question she was even trying to ask.

Luckily, the Master knew her well enough to figure it out, though he didn’t seem happy about it. “So disturbing?” he said icily.

She nodded.

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe it’s because without knowing who we really were, we somehow managed to go from hating one another to getting _engaged_ in the span of only a few _months!”_ he snarled. “Or because we still don’t know why we Arched ourselves in the first place! Or _maybe_ it’s because I thought that Jenny Smith was just another grubby human fly and now I’m sitting here looking at you and feeling—” He cut himself off by physically putting a hand over his mouth.

A chill moved over the surface of her skin. “And feeling what?”

He shivered but didn’t meet her eyes. “Famished,” he whispered, dropping his hand down into his lap.

The Doctor inhaled sharply. Though not a surprise, it was still a little unnerving to hear him say it so directly.

And it was also… well, he wasn’t the only one feeling that way. Her hearts were still racing and she kept wondering what would happen if she reached out and touched him.

“If it was just the attraction bit,” the Master continued, “I could handle that. Biology, hormones, impulses… but before we even got to this point, before we regenerated, we… we were…”

“Different,” she finished. “Our relationship changed long before our faces did.”

“And _that_ is the most terrifying part,” he said, “and it’s not often that I admit to being scared of anything. Daleks, drowning, and you—that’s about it.”

“Wait, drowning?”

“Ignore that,” he said hastily. “What I mean is: you asked me not to leave… and for what is possibly the first time in my entire life I’m actually going to give you what you asked for.”

She couldn’t help feeling a little sceptical. “Why would you start now?”

“Because…” He looked like he was about to jump off a cliff. “...because I don’t want to go.”

Those words triggered another echo, one from further back, in another Doctor’s voice: _I don’t want to go._

_How did he know those words?_

“So you can see why I’m terrified,” he continued. “I don’t know which I want more: for you to be just as scared as I am or for you to be fearless and have an _answer_ to this.”

The Doctor was fairly certain that her jaw had dropped at this point. In all their years of rivalry and enmity, the Master had never, _never,_ displayed anything that came this close to… 

_Weakness. Vulnerability._

_Honesty._

His eyes pleaded with her to say something.

_I’m not brave enough for this._

She couldn’t look away, but she couldn’t speak either.

_But if I don’t speak, he’ll just retreat inside his own pain again._

_How did Harry and Jenny get to this point without falling apart a thousand times?_

“I was going to tell you,” she confessed. It was really the middle of a thought but she knew that if she started from the beginning she might not make it far enough to get to the important part. “Before we left Bristol to come here, I was going to tell you that I was… I was ready for things to change. Between us, I mean. That this was the beginning—or could be the beginning, if you wanted it to be.” 

Why was it so difficult to say any of this? Why was it so hard to look at him as she spoke?

“So why didn’t you?” the Master asked suspiciously.

“Because this trip was…” She winced slightly. “It was meant to be a test. And I knew that if I told you then, it would make it sound like a reward for your good behaviour.”

He snorted. “You think you’re a reward?”

The Doctor responded with a tiny smirk. “Aren’t I?”

He laughed quietly to himself. “Without hope, without witness, without reward… of course you were going to be _literal_ about it.” His expression grew a little sly. “So what exactly was my _reward_ supposed to be?”

Her face felt like it was on fire. Did her former regenerations blush this much?

“Well,” she said, feeling a bit awkward, “I did vow to watch over your body for a thousand years.”

The Master’s eyes lit up with amusement. “And…?” he asked teasingly.

By this point, the Doctor was practically writhing with embarrassment. “You’re not the only one who’s… famished,” she managed to blurt out.

She waited for the mockery, the derision, and quite possibly the sudden dash for the door.

_This is a lot to deal with in the first ten minutes of a new regeneration, even for me._

After a few seconds of silence, the Master rolled his eyes. “Do I _always_ have to go first?” he complained.

“Do you what?”

He made another scoff of annoyance—and then leaned in to kiss her. 

Somehow, as if from out of a dream, the Doctor could hear the faint strains of music: a song that she could almost place… the combination of a piano and an electric guitar… the memory of her fingers moving over the strings… 

In the present moment, her fingers were moving over the skin of his shoulders, his back, his chest… her hands and lips were hungry— _famished_ —to the point of greed, wanting just a little more than she had one second, only to get it in the next and finding it insufficient, though not disappointing—quite the opposite in fact—but trapping her in a cycle of escalating desire, one where she found herself despising all of the things that lay in between them—which in this case were primarily her clothes and possibly the laws of physics as well.

Though she did eventually come up for breath and to ask a question: “When have you ever gone first?” she demanded.

“I’m always the one trying to get your attention,” he pointed out.

“Usually through _murder,”_ the Doctor countered.

“I’ll admit, this way is much nicer.” He started undoing the buttons on her shirt.

 _Next outfit, no buttons,_ she decided as she helped him along. Her impatience was nearly enough to make her scream.

“The skirt looks nice on you, by the way,” she told him.

“I think I might keep it,” he murmured, then grimaced. “Though the underwear’s riding up a bit at the moment.”

She gave him a wicked grin. “I know an easy way to fix that problem.”

They resumed kissing and for a few minutes the Doctor forgot everything else.

“So,” the Master said, once things had calmed down slightly, “I’ve passed your little test and gotten my reward—”

“This was _not_ your—” she objected, before realising that he was teasing her again. She rolled her eyes.

“Now that we’ve done all that, what happens next?” he asked.

That was something the Doctor had been thinking about for awhile—for nearly the entire time since Missy’s “execution” and imprisonment. “We made a pact, a very long time ago, that one day we’d go see every star in the universe. I know you don’t tend to keep your promises—”

“Neither do you.”

“—but maybe we could keep this one.” She smiled wryly. “Unless you’d rather go back to napping in the Vault?”

“I can’t tell if that’s a threat or a joke.”

“Aren’t they the same thing to you?”

“Ooo, you’ve gone all insightful,” the Master said, pretending to look weary. “Not sure I’m a fan of that.”

“Come on,” she urged him, “new regeneration, new relationship, new start… we’ve got time and a TARDIS. What do you say?”

“So we just go _look_ at things?”

“And meddle,” she conceded. “We can meddle a little. We could even try to put right a few of the things you broke in the past.”

The Master scoffed. “My repentance might not stretch quite that far.”

“We’ll have to see, won’t we?” she teased him. “Although, before we do anything else, we should probably go pick up Nardole.”

“He can wait a few hours. It’ll give him something to be indignant about later. He loves being indignant—ooo,” he said suddenly. “Want to see how long we can pretend that I’m the Doctor and you’re Missy before he figures it out?”

“Be careful,” the Doctor warned him with a grin. “If you keep up the act for too long you might find yourself doing all sorts of noble things.”

He made a face at her. “Sanctimonious.”

“Helpful, even.”

“I’ll stick with ‘Queen of Evil,’ thank you very much,” he said haughtily.

“But you’ll do it? You’ll travel with me?”

“Prepare yourself for a centuries-long moral equivalent of a slap fight,” the Master cautioned her.

“I’ll even brace myself for a literal slap fight,” she whispered, leaning in for another kiss.

“Look at that,” the Doctor murmured when their lips parted. “We went from despising one another to making plans for the future together. I think I understand how Jenny and Harry managed it now.” She frowned. “Why did they use the Arch, though?”

“For fun, I suppose,” the Master theorised. “I don’t recall what our future selves were like after they changed back.”

The Doctor, to her annoyance, couldn’t either. She remembered Jenny and Harry being upset to discover that they weren’t who they thought they were, but her memories of what the Doctor and the Master were like afterwards were nearly nonexistent, apart from the revelation of Bill’s fate. “At this point,” she sighed, “I’m not sure we’ll ever find out exactly what happened—not unless we do it ourselves.”

“Not sure I’d consider ‘slumming it on Earth’ an attractive holiday destination,” he retorted.

“Who knows?” she said with a shrug. “We’ve certainly done enough unexpected things already. Maybe you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

The Master proceeded to sulk, though it was obvious that he was joking. “We could visit Gallifrey,” he suggested eventually. “Get into some trouble together, for old times’ sake.”

She couldn’t help laughing. “Imagine their faces when we show up, actually on the same side for once.”

“We’d be exiled again in under a day,” he said, joining in on her laughter. “Probably after burning down half the Citadel.”

“And accidentally overthrowing the Lord President,” she added. “I’ve done that… three times now?”

“Three times?”

“Well, definitely more than twice.” It really seemed like every time she went back to Gallifrey, she somehow ended up getting involved in politics.

“How about this,” the Master said. “First one to dig up something scandalous on Rassilon in the Matrix gets to pick our next destination.”

“You’re on.”

Rather than replying, he watched her in silence, staring at her as if she was the only thing in the universe.

The implications of what had occurred between them suddenly hit the Doctor like a stack of bricks. “We’re actually doing this,” she said, stunned.

“Cheer up, we’ll probably go back to trying to murder one another in a few days.”

The Master was joking, she knew, but it still didn’t keep the tiny prickle of worry from forming in the Doctor’s stomach. Everything could still go so horribly wrong, just like it had before. This brief period of harmony could be nothing more than a fluke, a game of make-believe until they fell back into their old habits.

_Only one way to find out, I suppose._

“I don’t know if I’ve ever given you a proper tour of the TARDIS,” she said, standing and offering him a hand up. 

Once he was on his feet, he didn’t let go of her fingers. “I’m surprised you know the layout yourself,” he said in mock-astonishment. “Your interiors are usually as chaotic as the rest of you.”

“A little chaos can be a wonderful thing,” she remarked with a sly grin. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

His answer—an agreement, the Doctor assumed—was in the form of a kiss.

_This might actually work._

“Were you humming something just then?” she asked. 

The Master blinked in surprise. “Was I?”

“Yes, you were.” It was the same tune that she had heard in her own subconscious a few minutes before.

_“It’s still the same old story, a fight for love and glory, a case of do or die…”_

But the rest of it remained tantalisingly out of reach.

_I’m sure I’ll remember the rest of it eventually._

“Come on,” the Doctor said, “we should get dressed.” Her eyes briefly flicked down to take in the sight of his bare chest and her unbuttoned shirt. “Of course, we’ll have to finish getting _undressed_ first.”

They headed for the stairs leading down to the rest of the TARDIS at something that was almost, but not quite, a run.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer that I don't entirely know what they're going to find if/when they go to Gallifrey, but your options are a) fine, b) zany, c) ANGST, d) horrifying, or e) all of the above. :)


End file.
